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Israel's former military chief Gadi Eisenkot was set Sunay to be given the tough task of forming a government, giving him weeks to cobble together a coalition to replace Benjamin Netanyahu, the country's longest-serving prime minister.Eisenkot, 66, a political novice who has vowed to bridge Israel's deep polarisation under Netanyahu, was due to meet President Isaac Herzog who will formally give him the mandate to form a government with an initial deadline of 28 days.Eisenkot, born to a family of working-class Moroccan immigrants, would be the first Sephardic prime minister — a descendant of Jews from the Middle East or North Africa — in a country long dominated by an Ashkenazi elite with ties to Europe.Netanyahu, who has been prime minister on and off for nearly two decades and has led war on Gaza, Lebanon and Iran since the October 7, 2023 attacks, lost support in last month's election but no side claimed an outright majority.In consultations last week with Herzog, Eisenkot received recommendations from parties accounting for 67 lawmakers, against 46 for Netanyahu.But the vote count included Israeli Arabs, whose seat haul surged to a historic high on anger over Netanyahu's government, which includes far-right firebrands who have openly sought to marginalise the community.Avigdor Liberman, a former Netanyahu aide turned sharp critic who nonetheless shares his hawkish views, has been adamant against any alliance with Israeli Arabs, descendants of Palestinians who stayed after Israel's creation in 1948.Taking back one of his signature campaign pledges, Liberman instead voiced an openness to an alliance with ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose almost singular priority is ensuring that they remain exempt from military service.The exemption for the ultra-Orthodox — whose two main parties had been aligned with Netanyahu but could push Eisenkot to a majority — has been a source of growing resentment for many Israelis as reservists fight on multiple tours of duty.Liberman said Sunday he still backed conscription for all Israelis but that he had to make "difficult decisions" for the higher priority of ousting Netanyahu, who faces corruption charges that could land him in jail if he loses power.But he remained adamant that he would never ally with Israeli Arabs."I will not lend a hand to the establishment of such a government, which in my view will harm security and bring Netanyahu back to power," Liberman wrote on X.Liberman, whose party at seven votes is the smallest within the opposition bloc, denied speculation he was trying to engineer a deadlock that could result in him becoming prime minister.Born in Moldova and with a party base originally from Russian-speaking immigrants, Liberman said that commentators' views on his motives had "sometimes a distinctly racist tone".Naftali Bennett, the second strongest opposition leader after Liberman, has also been outspoken against the ultra-Orthodox community's military exemption and has stayed quiet since Liberman's about-face.Eisenkot has called for a "national emergency" government that would remove Netanyahu, calling him "a fundamental threat to the very existence of Israeli democracy".He has ruled out a unity government with Netanyahu, who has repeatedly called for a broad coalition with himself at the top.Eisenkot appears to be suggesting that he is willing to start off with a minority government — relying on outside votes from Israeli-Arab parties — while still working to find a stable government with majority support.Assaf Shapira, a political expert at the Israel Democracy Institute, said that Eisenkot would face an especially fragile government if it only has 48 lawmakers, even if others promise to keep it in power."To pass laws, you need strong support from other parties," Shapira said, explaining that an Eisenkot minority government would be forced into extensive negotiations on every piece of legislation.Eisenkot has vowed to repair Israel's international reputation and put an end to rampant violence against Palestinians by extremist West Bank settlers supported by Netanyahu's government.He has warned Netanyahu he does not have the mandate for another attack on Iran but has also largely backed his war decisions.Commanding the military during the 2006 war with Hezbollah, Eisenkot devised the so-called "Dahiya doctrine" that calls for massive force against civilian infrastructure where enemies operate, a policy critics say amounts to a war crime.In Tel Aviv, Neri Bar-On, who works in educational technology, said he expected Eisenkot to succeed in forming a government."But the problems run deeper," he said."The country is facing a massive internal conflict; even if he manages to form a government, it won't solve the underlying issues." 

Two clocks are running in this war. One belongs to Washington and Tel Aviv. The other belongs to Tehran. Only one of them is ticking. Iran's escalation across the Gulf, into Jordan, and now toward Egypt looks reckless to outside observers. It is not. It rests on two calculations that no amount of American firepower can dissolve: geography and time. Iran holds both cards. Trump and Netanyahu hold neither. The Fortress Nobody Can Storm Start with the land itself. Iran is not Iraq. It is nearly four times the size, with a population three times larger, and a topography built by nature for defense rather than conquest. The Zagros and Alborz ranges cut across the country like two walls. Half of Iran's territory is mountainous. The Cato Institute's assessment of a prospective ground campaign put it bluntly: Iran's terrain is "punishing" and any full invasion would "rival or exceed the scale of Vietnam or the 1991 Gulf War”. *Foreign Policy magazine went further, arguing that Iran's interior creates natural defensive barriers unmatched by any American campaign "since the Pacific island-hopping of World War II". That is not hyperbole. It is topography. Mountains do not negotiate a timeline. They simply outlast whoever is trying to cross them. Iranian analyst Arman Mahmoudian, writing for *Middle East Eye, made the historical case. Iran did not sue for peace even when Iraq captured Khorramshahr and besieged Abadan during the 1980s war. Occupation, he noted, has never produced Iranian capitulation. "Any US operation there will face the same issue," he said. Farzin Nadimi, a Washington-based analyst generally unsympathetic to Tehran, reached a similar conclusion on the question of Iranian ground offensives against Gulf bases. Large-scale conventional operations, he said, are simply not conceivable, for either side. Former US Army intelligence analyst Harrison Mann was even more direct about the idea of seizing Kharg Island, Iran's main oil export terminal. Any such attempt, he warned, would be "close to a suicide mission”. This is the first weapon. Iran cannot be occupied at a cost the American public, or Congress, would ever tolerate. The Strait as Leverage The second front is water, not land. Iran does not need to conquer Hormuz. It needs only to contest it, and it has done exactly that. The IRGC Navy has repeatedly declared the strait under its command. "All traffic is under the full control of the armed forces," one naval statement read, warning that any adversary who mishandled the waterway would become "trapped in a deadly vortex". Naval official Mohammad Akbarzadeh made the same claim to Iranian state media: the strait, he said, remains "under the complete control of the Islamic Republic's Navy”. Washington disputes this, and Centcom has issued its own rebuttals. However, dispute is itself the point. A fifth of the world's oil and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas (LNG) pass through Hormuz. Even a contested claim of control forces global shipping insurers, tanker operators, and oil markets to price in Iranian leverage. Iran does not need to win the argument over sovereignty. It only needs the argument to remain unresolved. Every week that passes without a decisive American answer is a week in which Tehran's claim gains weight simply by surviving. Whose Clock Is Actually Running This is where the second factor becomes decisive: time. Iran has no election. Its leadership answers to no voter, no opposition bloc, and no polling cycle. Trump and Netanyahu answer to all three, simultaneously. Netanyahu faces an Israeli election now scheduled for October 27, with polls consistently showing his coalition falling well short of a majority. He remains on trial for corruption. His far-right partners have threatened repeatedly to bolt his government. Analysts tracking the race have noted that if Netanyahu loses, the outcome could carry personal legal consequences, not just a change of government. Every additional month of war is a month he must justify to voters who are exhausted, not energised. Trump's exposure is different but no less real. His own rhetoric captures the bind. He has swung between promising a decisive "beating" – telling Fox News in late July that Iran would be hit "20 to 1" – and floating a pause to let talks proceed, saying at one point he was "considering a massive attack" while simultaneously insisting Iran was "getting more serious" about a deal. That oscillation is not strategic ambiguity. It is the sound of a president trying to manage a war that has no clean exit before his own political clock, the midterms, starts to matter. Iran's leadership has neither pressure. It can hold the burning amber in its hand, absorb the pain of strikes, and calculate in years rather than news cycles. The Wager Tehran Is Making None of this means Iran is winning the war in any conventional sense. Its air defences have been degraded. Its economy is strained. Its casualties are real. This is opinion, not settled fact, but it is the wager Tehran appears to be making: that geography closes off the one outcome Washington actually wants – regime collapse through invasion – while time works against the two leaders most invested in forcing that outcome. If that calculation holds, Iran does not need to defeat the United States militarily. It needs only to survive long enough, and assert enough leverage over Hormuz, to emerge from this war as the power that could not be dislodged. That would be a transformation in regional standing, not a battlefield victory. It would also be the only victory Iran's geography and its patience were ever built to deliver. • The writer is a prominent news anchor, programme presenter and media instructor.

President Donald Trump unveiled a wide-ranging Gaza peace plan Monday and won backing from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.The 20-point plan, which Trump has also circulated to Arab leaders, calls for a ceasefire, release of hostages by Hamas, disarmament of Hamas and gradual Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.Other key points include deployment of a "temporary international stabilisation force" and creation of a transitional authority headed by Trump himself and featuring other foreign leaders.The deal would demand resistance movement Hamas fighters fully disarm and be excluded from future roles in the government. However, those who agreed to "peaceful co-existence" would be given amnesty.Following Israeli withdrawal, the borders would be opened to aid and investment.In a crucial change from Trump's earlier apparent goals, Palestinians will not be forced to leave Gaza and instead, the document said, "we will encourage people to stay and offer them the opportunity to build a better Gaza."Netanyahu made clear he was in favour, saying it "achieves our war aims," while Trump said he was hopeful that Hamas would also give its backing.Approval from all sides was "beyond very close," Trump said. Proposal calls for release of hostages within 48 hours of ceasefire.However, many important details remained to be clarified.The US president had met key Arab leaders at the United Nations last week and said Sunday on social media that " all are on board for something special, first time ever".Normally a staunch ally of Netanyahu, the US president has shown increasing signs of frustration ahead of the Israeli premier's fourth White House visit since Trump's return to power.Trump was infuriated by Israel's recent strike on Hamas members in key US ally Qatar.And he warned Netanyahu last week against annexing the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as some of Netanyahu's cabinet members have urged, a move that would seriously complicate the route to Palestinian statehood.Netanyahu's coalition government is propped up by the far-right ministers who oppose a peace deal.Hamas' apparent absence from the negotiations has raised questions about the prospects for the latest initiative.Meanwhile, Israeli strikes continued across the Gaza Strip, killing at least four people in Khan Younis, according to the Hamas-run territory's civil defense agency.Families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza urged Trump to uphold his Gaza proposal.And in Gaza, people expressed a mix of hope, exhaustion and distrust ahead of the White House meeting.Israel's offensive has killed 66,055 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory.

Hamas said a mass walkout of delegations before Benjamin Netanyahu's speech at the UN Friday showed Israel's "isolation" as a result of the Gaza war."Boycotting Netanyahu's speech is one manifestation of Israel's isolation and the consequences of the war of extermination," Taher al-Nunu, the media adviser to the head of Hamas's political bureau, said in a statement.As the Israeli PM walked up to the General Assembly rostrum, a number of delegations walked out — in a deliberate protest as the Israeli premier was the day's first speaker.Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas's political bureau, said Netanyahu had been left with "nothing but a chorus of cheerleaders who entered the UN hall only to clap in support of genocide".In a statement, Hamas accused Netanyahu of repeating "lies and blatant denial of the genocide, forced displacement and systematic starvation committed by him" and the Israeli military in Gaza."If he truly cared for his captives, he would end the brutal bombing, massacres and destruction of Gaza, but instead, he lies and continues to endanger their lives," the group said, referring to the hostages held by Hamas fighters.During his angry UN address, Netanyahu vowed to block a Palestinian state, accusing European leaders who recently recognised one of rewarding Hamas.Hamas said that the boycott of Netanyahu's speech showed the "growing global solidarity with the Palestinian people's right to self-determination and the establishment of their independent state".A Palestinian foreign ministry official slammed Netanyahu's speech at the UN, saying it was "saturated with lies and falsifications"."It was the speech of a defeated man, a desperate leader who once again tried to rally a West that has increasingly distanced itself from a genocidal state, using fear as his only argument," the director of the ministry's European affairs department, Adel Atieh, told AFP."This speech showed neither vision nor perspective: it only reflected growing isolation, a headlong rush forward and the anxiety of a power that knows it stands on the wrong side of history," he added.Israel's offensive has killed at least 65,549 Palestinians, mostly civilians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the UN considers reliable.Meanwhile, the main Israeli group representing the families of hostages decried Netanyahu's call at the UN Friday to "finish the job" in Gaza, saying it endangered the remaining captives."Every day of continued war puts the living hostages at greater risk...," the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement."Time and again, (Netanyahu) has chosen to squander every opportunity to bring them home."US President Donald Trump said he thought he had sealed a deal on a ceasefire after nearly two years of war.